"Police! Police!" they shouted to each other as they fled by a doorway to a secret pa.s.sage.
Clutching Hand turned to his first a.s.sistant.
"You--go--too," he ordered.
The dogs had led us to a strange looking house, and were now baying and leaping up against the door. We did not stop to knock, but began to break through, for inside we could hear faintly sounds of excitement and cries of "Police--police!"
The door yielded and we rushed into a long hallway. Up the pa.s.sage we went until we came to another door.
An instant and we were all against it. It was stout, but it shook before us. The panels began to yield.
On the other side of that door from us, the master crook stood for a moment. Dr. Morton hesitated, not knowing quite what to do.
Just then the wounded Pitts Slim lifted his hand feebly. He seemed vaguely to understand that the game was up. He touched the Clutching Hand.
"You did your best, Chief," he murmured thickly. "Beat it, if you can.
I"m a goner, anyway."
Clutching Hand hesitated by the wounded crook. This was the loyalty of gangland, worthy a better cause. He could not bring himself to desert his pal. He was undecided, still.
But there was the door, bulging, and a panel bursting.
He moved over to a panel in the wall and pushed a spring. It slid open and he stepped through. Then it closed--not a second too soon.
Back in his private room, he quickly stepped to a curtained iron door.
Pushing back the curtains, he went through it and disappeared, the curtains falling back.
At the end of the pa.s.sageway, he stopped, in a sort of grotto or cave.
As he came out, he looked back. All was still. No one was about. He was safe here, at least!
Off came the mask and he turned down the road a few rods distant beyond some bushes, as little concerned about the wild happenings as any other pa.s.ser-by might have been.
At the very moment when we burst in, Dr. Morton, seeing his chance, stopped the blood transfusion, working frantically to stop the flow of blood.
Kennedy sprang to Elaine"s side, horrified by the blood that had spattered over everything.
With a mighty effort he checked a blow that he had aimed at Dr. Morton, as it flashed over him that the surgeon, now free again, was doing his best to save the terribly imperilled life of Elaine.
Just then the police burst through the secret panel and rushed on, leaving us alone, with the unconscious, scarcely breathing Elaine. From the sounds we could tell that they had come to the private room of the Clutching Hand. It was empty and they were non-plussed.
"Not a window!" called one.
"What are those curtains?"
They pulled them back, disclosing an iron door. They tried it but it was bolted on the other side. Blows had no effect. They had to give it up for the instant.
A policeman now stood beside Elaine and the wounded burglar who was muttering deliriously to himself.
He was pretty far gone, as the policeman knelt down and tried to get a statement out of him.
"Who was that man who left you--last--the Clutching Hand?"
Not a word came from the crook.
The policeman repeated his question.
With his last strength, he looked disdainfully at the officer"s pad and pencil. "The gangster never squeals," he snarled, as he fell back.
Dr. Morton had paid no attention whatever to him, but was working desperately now over Elaine, trying to bring her back to life.
"Is she--going to--die?" gasped Craig, frantically.
Every eye was riveted on Dr. Morton.
"She is all right," he muttered. "But the man is going to die."
At the sound of Craig"s voice Elaine had feebly opened her eyes.
"Thank heaven," breathed Craig, with a sigh of relief, as his hand gently stroked Elaine"s unnaturally cold forehead.
CHAPTER VII
THE DOUBLE TRAP
Mindful of the sage advice that a time of peace is best employed in preparing for war, I was busily engaged in cleaning my automatic gun one morning as Kennedy and I were seated in our living room.
Our door buzzer sounded and Kennedy, always alert, jumped up, pushing aside a great pile of papers which had acc.u.mulated in the Dodge case.
Two steps took him to the wall where the day before he had installed a peculiar box about four by six inches long connected in some way with a lens-like box of similar size above our bell and speaking tube in the hallway below. He opened it, disclosing an oblong plate of ground gla.s.s.
"I thought the seismograph arrangement was not quite enough after that spring-gun affair," he remarked, "so I have put in a sort of teleview of my own invention--so that I can see down into the vestibule downstairs. Well--just look who"s here!"
"Some new fandangled periscope arrangement, I suppose?" I queried moving slowly over toward it.
However, one look was enough to interest me. I can express it only in slang. There, framed in the little thing, was a vision of as swell a "chicken" as I have ever seen.
I whistled under my breath.